The fact, that truth may subsist with a very considerable admixture of falsehood, is too well known to require an argument. However reprehensible such an admixture may be in morals, it becomes in Art, from the limited nature of our powers, a matter of necessity.
For the same reason, even the realizing of a thought, or that which is properly and exclusively human, must ever be imperfect. If Truth, then, form but the greater proportion, it is quite as much as we may reasonably look for in a work of Art. But why, it may be asked, where the false predominates, do we still derive pleasure? Simply because of the Truth that remains. If it be further demanded, What is the minimum of truth in order to a pleasurable effect? we reply, So much only as will cause us to feel that the truth _exists_. It is this feeling alone that determines, not only the true, but the degrees of truth, and consequently the degrees of pleasure.
Where no such feeling is awakened, and supposing no deficiency in the recipient, he may safely, from its absence, pronounce the work false; nor could any ingenious theory of the understanding convince him to the contrary. He may, indeed, as some are wont to do, make a random guess, and _call_ the work true; but he can never so _feel_ it by any effort of reasoning. But may not men differ as to their impressions of truth? Certainly as to the degrees of it, and in this according to their sensibility, in which we know that men are not equal. By sensibility here we mean the power or capacity of receiving impressions. All men, indeed, with equal organs, may be said in a certain sense to see alike. But will the same natural object, conveyed through these organs, leave the same impression? The fact is otherwise. What, then, causes the difference, if it be not (as before observed) a peculiar something in the individual mind, that modifies the image? If so, there must of necessity be in every true work of Art--if we may venture the expression--another, or distinctive, truth. To recognize this, therefore,--as we have elsewhere endeavoured to show,--supposes in the recipient something akin to it. And, though it be in reality but a _sign_ of life, it is still a sign of which we no sooner receive the impress, than, by a law of our mind, we feel it to be acting upon our thoughts and sympathies, without our knowing how or wherefore. Admitting, therefore, the corresponding instinct, or whatever else it may be called, to vary in men,--which there is no reason to doubt,--the solution of their unequal impression appears at once. Hence it would be no extravagant metaphor, should we affirm that some persons see more with their minds than others with their eyes. Nay, it must be obvious to all who are conversant with Art, that much, if not the greater part, in its higher branches is especially addressed to this mental vision. And it is very certain, if there were no truth beyond the reach of the senses, that little would remain to us of what we now consider our highest and most refined pleasure.